Posts Tagged ‘hot dogs’

“Showmen behind Nathan’s annual Fourth of July hot dog eating contest have long claimed the tradition began in 1916 as a showdown between patriotic immigrants on the Coney Island boardwalk.

That would make this Monday’s contest a centennial, except for an inconvenient truth: The contest and its backstory were invented in the 1970s by PR men trying to get more attention for Nathan’s, which had just become a publicly traded company.

‘Our objective was to take a photograph and get it in the New York newspaper,’ acknowledges Wayne Norbitz, who served as president of Nathan’s for 26 years and still sits on the board of directors.

Norbitz is careful to say that the company’s source for the 1916 story is ‘legend has it.’ He says the first contest actually happened in 1972, and the early chowdowns were all small, sparsely attended affairs.

‘We’d honestly wait for a couple of fat guys to walk by and ask them if they wanted to be in a hot dog contest,’ he says.”

Many Americans will celebrate this Independence Day by ingesting a batter-like slurry of pork and/or beef meat taken off the bone by advanced meat recovery machinery (AMM) and mixed with potassium lactate, sodium diacetate, sodium erythorbate, corn maltodextrin, sodium nitrate, and paprika extract, then forced into tubes for processing.

Patriotic citizens will heat the slurry-filled tubes over glowing little pillows of carbonized sawdust and petroleum distillates, place them in enriched flour buns moistened with a paste of ground yellow mustard seeds mixed with acetic acid and turmeric, and garnish them with many tiny cubes of chemically preserved cucumber dyed an improbable green with FD&C Yellow #5. Then they’ll eat them.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), has determined that consumption of processed meat is as bad for you as smoking. Eating 50 grams (1.76 ounces) of sausages, bacon, and ham daily makes it 18% more likely that you’ll get colorectal cancer. 50 grams is about 2 strips of bacon.

Further concerns for carnivores: IARC finds that even fresh red meat — beef, veal, pork*, lamb, mutton, horse, and goat — is “probably” carcinogenic, too. The risk of eating 50 grams of red meat daily is “mainly for colorectal cancer, but associations were also seen for pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer.” American men eat twice that much, according to the North American Meat Institute.

The new champ, 23 years old and 120 lbs., attends Mission College in Santa Clara, California. He’s majoring in nutrition and plans to become a dietitian. “A lot of people say it’s ironic,” he told Molly Vorwerck of theMercury News.“I think a lot of it is you kind of have to have an interest in food….”

Related:

“Joey Chestnut is focused on gobbling wieners after splitting from fiancee,” Beckie Strum, New York Post

An Oscar Mayer Wienermobilecrashed into a pole in central Pennsylvania on Sunday, according to the Associated Press. The self-propelled 27-foot hot dog on wheels slid off a road and into a utility pole in Enola PA, near Harrisburg. We suggest that accident investigators look for drips of slippery mustard.

The front of the weenie roll crumbled in this pole-ish sausage mishap, but no injuries were reported, and there’s no evidence the driver was hot-dogging. The crash snarled local traffic, since rubberneckers relish this sort of thing.

Oscar Mayer has several Wienermobiles, used to promote and advertise tubesteak products. Probably 10 wieners and 8 rolls, right?

Here in DC an NTSB spokesman was unavailable, and we could not reach former Wienermobile driver Paul Ryan for comment.

More:

“What happens when a giant hot dog on wheels slams into a pole?” CBS News

Many Americans will celebrate this Independence Day by ingesting a batter-like slurry of pork and/or beef meat taken off the bone by advanced meat recovery machinery (AMM) and mixed with potassium lactate, sodium diacetate, sodium erythorbate, corn maltodextrin, sodium nitrate, and paprika extract, then forced into tubes for processing.

Patriotic citizens will heat the slurry-filled tubes over glowing little pillows of carbonized sawdust and petroleum distillates, place them in enriched flour buns moistened with a paste of ground yellow mustard seeds mixed with acetic acid and turmeric, and garnish them with many tiny cubes of chemically preserved cucumber dyed an improbable green with FD&C Yellow #5. Then they’ll eat them.

“If the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council is right, Americans will eat enough hot dogs at Major League Baseball stadiums this season to stretch from Nationals Park to the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Chase Field in Phoenix.

Nearly 21.4 million hot dogs will be eaten, the trade group says. And we’ll eat another 5.5 million sausages.”

Many Americans will celebrate this Independence Day by ingesting a batter-like poultry product (made by forcing bones and attached edible tissue through a sieve under high pressure) blended with a slurry of pork and/or beef meat taken off the bone by advanced meat recovery machinery (AMM) and mixed with potassium lactate, sodium diacetate, sodium erythorbate, corn maltodextrin, sodium nitrate, and paprika extract, then forced into tubes.

These will be heated over glowing little pillows formed of carbonized sawdust and petroleum distillates and placed in enriched flour buns moistened by a paste of ground yellow mustard seeds mixed with acetic acid and turmeric, then garnished with cubes of chemically preserved cucumber dyed an improbable green with FD&C Yellow #5.

Many Americans will celebrate this Independence Day by ingesting a batter-like poultry product (made by forcing bones and attached edible tissue through a sieve under high pressure) blended with a slurry of pork and/or beef meat taken off the bone by advanced meat recovery machinery (AMM) and mixed with potassium lactate, sodium diacetate, sodium erythorbate, corn maltodextrin, sodium nitrate, and paprika extract, then forced into tubes.

These will be heated over glowing little pillows formed of carbonized sawdust and petroleum distillates and placed in enriched flour buns moistened by a paste of ground yellow mustard seeds mixed with acetic acid and turmeric, then garnished with cubes of chemically preserved cucumber dyed an improbable green with FD&C Yellow #5.